From SM 2005: This Can’t Be Good For Tourism, Where’s Natalee Holloway?

FROM 2005 COMES THE FOLLOWING POST IN THE DISAPPEARANCE OF NATALEE HOLLOWAY THAT STARTED IT ALL …

It started out as a simple post of a missing teen on vacation with her high school classmates and would become the top story of 2005 and one of the most covered missing person cases in history. Today marks 10 years since Natalee Holloway went missing in Aruba, her body has never been recovered and no one has answered for her death. JUSTICE FOR NATALEE!!!

For an Island paradise that prides itself on sandy beaches and a constant trade wind, the last thing they would want is bad publicity of an unsafe island. However, An Alabama high school student, Natalee Holloway, disappeared during her graduation trip to Aruba.

Natalee Holloway, 18, was among 125 graduating seniors from Mountain Brook High School, near Birmingham, on a five-day trip to the Caribbean island.

She was last seen getting into a vehicle and leaving a nightclub in the capital, Oranjestad, before dawn on Monday, deputy police chief Gerold Dompig said. She did not show up for her group’s return flight later in the day.

“We went to check in for our airplane, and she wasn’t there, and she’s been missing since then,” classmate Jay Weinacker said.

Having lived and worked there, people really need to understand that island’s like Aruba have their fair share of crime as well. Once you are away from the hotels and in Oranjestad it is no different than any other city in the US. Sometimes even worse.

Aruba police said Wednesday that they had questioned and released three local men who said they dropped the teenager off at her hotel late Sunday night. Officials said the girl’s parents were unable to spot her on a hotel surveillance tape.

There will be much, much more to come, check back during the day.

57 Year Old David Byles of Pinehurst, North Carolina Missing Since 1/20/14 After Cayman Islands Dive at Barracuda Wall off Seven Mile Beach (Update: Classified as Search & Recovery)

57 year old David Byles of  Pinehurst, NC has been missing since Sunday, January 20, 2014 in the Cayman Islands. David Byles went missing during an organized dive at Barracuda Wall off Grand Cayman’s Seven Mile Beach. According to accounts, Byles did surface with his wife from the dive and was in the process of swimming back to the dive boat when he disappeared. The dive company, Sunset Divers, part of the Sunset House diving resort in George Town, reported Byles missing on Sunday morning. Police air and marine units along with volunteers joined in the search for the missing tourist. Search efforts for the missing man have turned up his scuba tank, buoyancy control device and an article of his clothing in the water Monday. The items were located by police and volunteer divers at approximately 10:10 a.m. this morning, around 110 feet off the Barracuda Wall. However, David Byles is still missing.

Rita and Dave Byles

The Royal Cayman Islands Police Service said 57-year-old David Byles of Pinehurst, North Carolina, was last seen Sunday morning during an organized dive at Barracuda Wall off Grand Cayman’s Seven Mile Beach.

Byles had surfaced with his wife after a dive and they were swimming about 100 yards back to the boat when he vanished from view, police said. An immediate search of the area by the boat’s crew failed to find him.

Since then, police divers and various other personnel have conducted marine and air searches. The missing man’s scuba tank, buoyancy control device and an article of his clothing were found in the water Monday, but there was no sign of Byles, authorities said.

UPDATE I: Cayman 27 – Search for missing diver to continue for 3rd day.

Updates, pics and VIDEO can be seen at Cayman 27.

UPDATE II: Search for diver now classed as ‘search and recovery’.

The search for missing diver David Byles continued into its third day and hope is dwindling that Mr. Byles will be found alive. Police have confirmed their efforts have now been classified as a “search and recovery” mission.

“We are now in our third day of searching,” said Inspector Ian Yearwood in a press statement to Cayman 27. “It’s clear to everyone involved that it’s now extremely unlikely that Mr. Byles will be found alive. We have shared our concerns with his wife and we continue to keep her fully updated as to the status of the search and of any developments.”

The search for Mr. Byles continues and Inspector Ian Yearwood is calling on any boat owners or divers who can assist in the search this afternoon to contact him on the following numbers – 649-7803 or 526-3159.

NY Food Stamp Recipients Shipping Welfare Funded Groceries to Relatives in Jamaica, Dominican Republic and Haiti

Yup, no fraud here (NOT!!!) … What would you expect from a welfare entitlement program?

More of your hard earned tax dollars going up in smoke in welfare entitlement fraud. s reported at the NY Post, welfare recipients are buying groceries with their Electronic Benefit Transfer (EBT) cards and packing them in giant barrels and shipping them overseas. Isn’t that special. It is bad enough that food stamps are at record highs under President Barack Obama, but now we learn that the welfare program is full of welfare abuse and fraud. Michael Tanner, a senior fellow at the Cato Institute told The Post, “I don’t want food-stamp police to see what people do with their rice and beans, but it’s wrong.” Why not? The over-intrusive, big government seems to care about everything else we do from what we eat, the size of the drink we have and with the revelations of the NSA spying, pretty much every call, email and letter we send. So why not crack down on welfare fraud? Are these people some how special? Last time I checked, fraud was fraud. This is a crime folks, now its just a matter of whether any one is willing to enforce it.

Food stamps are paying for trans-Atlantic takeout — with New Yorkers using taxpayer-funded benefits to ship food to relatives in Jamaica, Haiti and the Dominican Republic.

Welfare recipients are buying groceries with their Electronic Benefit Transfer (EBT) cards and packing them in giant barrels for the trip overseas, The Post found.

The practice is so common that hundreds of 45- to 55-gallon cardboard and plastic barrels line the walls of supermarkets in almost every Caribbean corner of the city.

The feds say the moveable feasts go against the intent of the $86 billion welfare program for impoverished Americans.

A spokeswoman for the US Department of Agriculture’s Food and Nutrition Service said welfare benefits are reserved for households that buy and prepare food together. She said states should intervene if people are caught shipping nonperishables abroad.

Michael Tanner, a senior fellow at the Cato Institute, called it just another example of welfare abuse.

“I don’t want food-stamp police to see what people do with their rice and beans, but it’s wrong,” Tanner told The Post. “The purpose of this program is to help Americans who don’t have enough to eat. This is not intended as a form of foreign aid.”

Well at least the food stamp cards are not being used at strip clubs, liquor stores or porn shops. Oh wait, they were.

DEMOCRAT & MEDIA DOUBLE STANDARD … Oops, Looks like Obama Treasury Secretary Nominee Jack Lew was Sheltering his Money in the Cayman Islands … But It’s Not Romney So That’s OK

Imagine that, only sheltering monies in the Cayman Islands is an issue for Democrats and the MSM when it comes to Republicans and Mitt Romney. Where is that class warfare rhetoric from Obama now?

Don’t look now but President Barack Obama’s Treasury Secretary nominee Jack Lew’s nomination may have hit a bit of a snag. It would appear that he has made investments in the Cayman Island to shelter money. Of course this is not an issue now for the Obama White House, Democrats and the liberal MSM. It was only an issue for former 2012 GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney. Of course it will make no difference to Obama, he is the one who previously had Turbo tax cheat Timothy Geitner of the Treasury Secretary. What’s a little Cayman Island sheltered money?

Republicans have been critical of Lew since his nomination was announced last month. Sens. Jeff Sessions and Orrin Hatch have questioned his role in Medicare policy decisions and his role at Citigroup.

“He’s got to still answer some questions or we may have to postpone the hearing,” Hatch told POLITICO on Thursday. “Right now, I’ve agreed to the hearing date but it is subject to having answers to the questions that were raised. They aren’t difficult to answer, they can answer them.”

Sources said Republicans have not given any indication that they plan to use the information to stall the upcoming hearing or to block the nomination completely.

Committee members will have the chance to question Lew directly at the hearing next week.

“[They] have every right to bring these issues up, that is why we have the committee hearing,” Neary said. “No one is being stopped from asking any questions at these hearings.”

But of course there is no double standard here. Barack Obama was highly critical of GOP presidential nominee Mitt Romney for similar investments in funds based in the Cayman Islands, but now has the nerve to nominate an individual who has done the same. How hypocritical could Obama be? Obama obsessed over offshore tax shelters, but nominated someone who has done the very same that Obama claims to be against. What a joke. The Obama White House actually had the nerve to defend Lew and his investment by stating that Lew paid all his taxes on all of his income. As an American Thinker states, the point  is not that Lew disclosed or paid taxes on his income, the issue at hand is the idea that it is evil to have an offshore account – at least it was for Mitt Romney. The specter of an offshore account raise the issue of hidden income and avoidance of taxes. That was the story when Obama slandered Romney, but some hoe it a different story when it comes to Jack Lew.

“President Obama has been almost obsessively critical of offshore investments. He called Ugland House ‘either the biggest building or the biggest tax scam on record,’” Grassley wrote in a statement late Friday.

“For years, we’ve talked about shutting down overseas tax havens that let companies set up operations to avoid paying taxes in America,” Obama said. He said his budget proposal would crack down on businesses which incorporate in places such as Ugland House.

Grassley said of the contrast between Obama’s statements and Lew’s past investment, “The irony is thick.

Sex Scandal: Dominican Prostitute Says Sen. Bob Menendez ‘likes the youngest and newest girls’ … Did Menendez Break the Very Law (Protect Act) That He Voted For?

It had been previously reported that the FBI was investigating New Jersey Senator Bob Menendez. The 59 year old Democrat US Senator has been connected with long time Menendez campaign donor Dr. Salomon Melgen for accepting expense paid trips to the Dominican Republic. Such gifts are against the law and go against campaign-finance laws. Menendez paid the money back some two years later after the situation came to light. However, the story scandal does not stop there. Dr. Salomon Melgen is also being investigated for organizing sex parties where New Jersey Democratic Sen. Bob Menendez is accused of having sex wit underage female prostitutes. According to am email from the female prostitute released by CREW via the Daily Caller, Bob Menendez ‘likes the youngest and newest girls’.

In a little-noticed email published online Wednesday by Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW), a young Dominican woman wrote nine months ago that she slept with 59-year-old New Jersey Democratic Sen. Bob Menendez at a series of sex parties organized by Dr. Salomon Melgen, a longtime Menendez campaign donor.

“That senator also likes the youngest and newest girls,” the woman wrote on April 21, 2012, according to an English translation provided to The Daily Caller by a native Spanish speaker.

“In the beginning he seemed so serious, because he never spoke to anyone, but he is just like the others and has just about the same tastes as the doctor, very refined. I think they were taking us more often to get us checked [medically] because of him.”

See the email HERE.

VIDEO

More from The Daily Caller:

Her account of the sex parties Menendez allegedly attended in the Dominican Republic is the most detailed to surface since TheDC first began reporting on the story in November.

She told her story to a tipster who forwarded the email to CREW; it was not included with the cache of documents he published online on Jan. 24. TheDC was first to report on that dossier about Sen. Menendez, which included an interview transcript in which a different women claimed she was 16 when she began sleeping with him.

That young prostitute said she had sex with Menendez “three times at least” in 2009. “The first one in February, and then in May and June. I recall his visit in June so well because that month was my 17th birthday.”

Senator Bob Menendez has denied the allegations. However, if convicted Menendez could face 30 years in prison. The irony is that Menendez could have broke the “Protect Act,” otherwise known as the “Prosecutorial Remedies and Other Tools to end the Exploitation of Children Today” that he voted for when he was a member of the US House of Representatives.

If Senator Bob Menendez of New Jersey is found guilty of traveling to the Dominican Republic to engage in sexual intercourse with underage prostitutes, he could face up to 30 years prison. The appropriate law, which would seem to apply in this instance, is the Prosecutorial Remedies And Other Tools To End The Exploitation Of Children Today (or the Protect Act).